here - Eesti Rahvaluule

In the diabetes online community, the virtual community has
a stable core member group and a flow of members coming and
going as they get older or migrate and go through other life
changes. When the Estonian forum for diabetics opened in 2004,
there were many anonymous posts. In the first years there were
also many questions and participation by family members and
relatives of the afflicted. Later, majority of forum members were
diabetics.
The community of diabetics follows the model of the real society
in its division of roles, activity, etc. The range of ages goes
from teenagers to the middle aged, and even retired people.
Women are more active in organizing get-togethers, more active
in discussions about cultural events, accessories, decorations
– just as in real life. Speculatively, I would suggest that
written media favours women.
We can see that typically to all open web communities, the
number of readers, lurkers, stalkers, observers vastly exceeds
the actual posters. Smaller threads have been viewed by 350,
while popular ones are viewed more than 10000 times. The passive
portion of the community is so much bigger. The bridge
person between the active and the passive is the official head of
the union, who is not actively involved in discussion but whose
announcements are always read.
The diabetes community has a strong I- and us-identity, in
several topics there is a strong oppositional positioning again
“them” – the healthy, the non-diabetic. For example, when discussing
how and in particular how dangerously distorted is the
image THEY paint about diabetics. One point is that the American
movie industry uses diabetics often as the general figure of
an afflicted person and if people followed the instruction shown in
movies – get the syringe from his pocket and give an injection –
a real diabetic would probably die. This can also be seen as an
example of the cocktail party effect – out of all the background
noise, you clearly pick out your own name, or in this case, the
mention of your affliction.
THEMES OF DISCUSSION
Threads fall into two main types. The first type is where someone
posts a personal experience narrative. This kind of posts
172
Mare Kõiva